In education and training of household pets (e.g. dogs and cats) it is common to reward positive behavior in order to motivate animals to cooperate. Very often, this is done by giving so-called “treats”. Most often, treat dispensing is from feed bags or pockets, where the treat is taken out of the bag or pocket by hand, and fed directly to the mouth of the animal. Depending on the animal, accepting directly from the hand can be more or less rough. Therefore, many owners risk or fear potential injury if rewarding their animal directly from the hand, and thus avoid or refuse giving treats. Further, it is often not possible to wash or to disinfect hands after providing the treat. Also, smearing of the hands during dispensing is very unhygienic and owners want to entirely avoid this.
In US 2005/0183674 A1 a dispensing aid is disclosed by means of which, using a pushbutton, individual pieces of animal feed can be dispensed out of a housing in which they are stockpiled. The feed can be dispensed in prefabricated pieces, or in sections of rod shaped products. In the latter case, the length of the sections is determined by the depth of an antechamber which is arranged between the storage chamber and a dispensing surface. Thus, the amount of dispensed feed is not variable.